Is mobile marketing annoying?

Based on a study by Forrester Research consumers are finding mobile marketing annoying. This doesn’t come as too much of a surprise to me. Email spam is already out of hand and law makers are unwilling to set stricter guidelines.

I see mobile marketing a new frontier, but it needs to be done the right way. Mass marketing pushes to a wide consumer base are not the way to go. Mobile marketing needs to be tied to a value adding (from the consumers’ point of view) transaction. For example an airline customer checks on an international flight using their mobile device. An hour before departure they receive a message promoting a tax free item. The marketing effort is personalized to the situation that the consumer is in. Another example would be a consumer scheduling car maintenance using their mobile device. Soon after they receive a message saying that based on our records your tires are 3 years old. We have a promotion on new tires that we are offering to our loyal customers.

When applied in a focused fashion that anticipates a consumers potential needs and/or provides awareness of immediate benefits, then I believe that mobile marketing can be extremely effective and not seen as an annoyance.